


Nightfall

by Lirillith



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: F/M, Sharing Body Heat, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3141287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It gets cold at night after the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



By day, the air is a muggy, lukewarm soup that leaves them streaming sweat and makes clean water a desperate priority, though at least when Celes's magic is working she can alleviate some of that concern. The sun rarely emerges from the livid clouds, but the heat and humidity are all the more oppressive for it, and feel almost unhealthy; the sweat might as well come from fever rather than exertion, Celes thinks, but she tries not to think of fevers, of bathing Cid's brow and wading into the sea after fish. 

Sabin never initiates conversations, but when her thoughts go down that path and she makes some awkward observation in hopes of silencing them, he'll catch the words she tosses every time, effortlessly, and spin them into a story about his childhood with Edgar, or his training under Duncan, or some folklore from Figaro she'd never heard before. Of course he has no trouble, she thinks. He grew up surrounded by people of all ages; he grew up next to someone within an hour of his own age. Solitude was never the way of things for him.

When night falls, as abrupt as a drawn curtain, the sickly heat leaves with the light, and they curl together against the empty darkness and desert-like cold. At first, unaccustomed to being touched, she found the enforced closeness uncomfortable, but the need for warmth is more powerful than the dictates of awkwardness or reserve. And, eventually, proximity and loneliness work together in her to wake up some deeper, more primal need for touch. She finds herself welcoming the times he reaches out a hand to help her over some obstacle, rather than wondering if he thinks she's incapable of climbing over some rock. She huddles closer to his side than to the fire.

She puts her hands on him, deliberately, on his knee as they sit by the fire, on his shoulder when they unfurl the partial and inaccurate maps they've collected. She extends a hand to help him over an obstacle, too, and he takes it, because it was never about empty gallantry; anyone might need a hand up, in his eyes, men and women alike. That's part of the reason she reaches out. Part of the reason she suggests sharing their sleeping bags, pooling their warmth at night. 

The other part, of course, is simple appreciation for his warmth at her side and his skin under her fingertips. 

She didn't intend to proposition him, but he lies in the shared bag so ramrod-stiff and tense that she realizes things aren't going to progress as naturally as she'd hoped. They aren't going to, at least, until they are, because somehow awkwardness melts away again when they're facing each other, reaching under clothes because it's far too cold to remove them. 

She always wondered about how she'd do this, if she ever did; whether she could unfreeze long enough to touch someone, whether it was possible for the loss of her virginity to be anything other than a coup or conquest for the one who took it, whether she would be giving up control and autonomy along with it. Whether it had to be the apotheosis of a long-nurtured, finally-confessed love. 

It hadn't occurred to her that it might be an experience shared, that there might be laughter and questions and false starts. It hadn't occurred to her that there might be times after the first, even on that first night. 

There are more ways than one for two people to keep each other warm.


End file.
